ETC.: A Review of General Semantics

S. I. Hayakawa, editor

December 1965, "Special Issue on the Psychedelic Experience"

Introduction

SEARCH AND RESEARCH WITH THE PSYCHEDELICS

ROBERT E. MOGAR

The objective level... remains fundamentally
unspeakable.
[It] is not words, can not be reached by words alone,
and has nothing to do with 'good' and 'bad.'
ALFRED KORZYBSKI

In this strident era of over-communication, we are more
likely
to perish by the word than by the sword, and least of all to
perish by a loving silence.
IHAB HASSAN

AS THE CONTENTS of this issue make clear, the
consciousness-expanding drugs and the states they produce have
direct relevance to a wide range of fields and disciplines as
well as many aspects of modern culture. It is not surprising then
that general semanticswith its broad applicability, its
trans-disciplinary orientation, and its concern with social as
well as scientific issuesprovides a useful framework for
comprehending psychedelic phenomena. Similarly, it seems less
than a coincidence that five papers were submitted almost
simultaneously to ETC., each examining some aspect of this
class of experiences using the principles of general semantics.
The decision to devote an entire issue to the psychedelics was
prompted also by the concerted effort of these writers to
transcend the emotionalism and pro-con zeal characterizing
much of the literature to date. Since most of the papers were
written by students of general semantics rather than primary
investigators of these phenomena, each article has been commented
upon by a recognized authority on some aspect of the
psychedelics. In planning the issue, an attempt was made to
maximize diversity among contributors so as to present a broad
but comprehensive coverage and to include as many viewpoints as
possible.

Modern Man Plagued by Overabstraction

SINCE psychedelic substances have been known and ingested
throughout man's history, the increasing interest and fascination
generated recently seem particularly significant. The reasons
behind this widespread attraction (or avoidance) are of course
multiple and complex. Although presently unclear, one general
reason can be identified: Either as a means of investigating
higher thought processes or as a potentially valuable personal
experience, the LSD-induced state is intriguing because it meshes
with the zeitgeist in the social sciences and with major
trends in the larger culture.
There is considerable evidence and commentary from a variety
of quarters which support this contention. As a case in point,
Aldous Huxley's prolific writings give eloquent testimony to a
dominant theme in contemporary thought; namely, the strangely
ambivalent relationship between culture and the individual.

We are at once the beneficiaries of our culture and its
victims.... Culture and that pre-condition of all culture,
language, have made possible all the achievements of talent
and sanctity. They have also given us fanaticism,
superstition... nationalistic idolatry, and mass-murder in
the name of God.1

Huxley showed a life-long preoccupation with the artificial
polarities which have continually plagued Western man. Like
Korzybski, Huxley anticipated by a quarter of a century William
Barrett's pronouncement that the most formidable problem facing
man in the twentieth century is the conciliation of opposites.
Huxley wrestled persistently with the contrived antagonism
erected between the scientific and the poetic, mind and body,
reason and impulse. He was one of the few men of modern times
deeply aware of the essential union and coexistence of opposites.
It is perhaps significant that a man who felt equally at home
with contemporary science and art, mystical states of awareness,
and general semantics should write three books and many articles
devoted to psychedelic phenomena.
The ambivalence of man toward the culture he has inherited
and continually creates, articulated so incisively by Huxley, has
reached new heights in the present era. On the one hand, we have
at our command a technology capable of making the lives of men
healthy, safe, and reasonably secure for the first time in
history. Until recently, the motive power of civilization,
particularly in Western cultures, has necessarily focused on
survival and environmental mastery. In Maslow's terms, the
organismic equilibrium made possible by satiated bodily needs,
physical safety, and some measure of psychological security is
prerequisite to more uniquely human pursuits. This hierarchical
conception of man's strivings depicts him as a self-directed
creature with impulses toward growth and self-enhancement as well
as homeostatic maintenance.2 To the degree that
Maslow's humanistic image of man engages the modern temper, the
realization of human potentialities should reach unprecedented
heights in the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, many writers, impressed with the
progressive subordination of personal identity to what Erik
Erikson calls the "technological superidentity," do not
foresee any greater actualizing of man's vast personal resources.
Particular attention has been called to our ultra-rational
commitment to structured, controlled forms of experience; that
is, the restricted range of experience sanctioned by public
consensus. A corollary to this feature of modern culture is our
inordinate investment in language and higher-order abstractions
at the expense of nonverbal experience and nonverbal
communication. In this connection, L. L. Whyte refers to the
"western dissociation," a division of mind and body
which scientific-industrial society has pushed almost to the
limit of endurance.3 More recently, Burton and Kantor
have noted:

As a culture attains higher forms, it desiccates itself by
abstractions and reduces the immediacy of personal
experience. The prevalent cry of alienation and "loss of
meaning" today is just that quality of culture which
denies the body and ignores the integrative aspects of its
impulses.4

The paradoxical relationship between language and experience
has been well stated by Robert Cohen:

It is most impelling to observe how verbal language, which
evolved as an instrument to describe, to define, to sing, to
acquaint man with the thoughts of another, which binds time
and makes each man heir to the efforts of his brother (and a
potential slave to the past) can destroy its maker.... This
possibility arises from a lessened ability to recognize and
hence respond to important fundamental sense impressions.5

LSD and the Corrective Measures of Korzybski

AS STUDENTS of general semantics are well aware, the problems
alluded to by these representative writers were explicitly
recognized by Korzybski. Science and Sanity depicts in
graphic detail the "unsane" consequences of
"identifying or confusing words with objects and feelings,
or memories and ideas with experiences which belong to the
un-speakable objective level."6 It is through
lack of consciousness of abstracting that objectification,
identification, and allness occurhabits of thought which
narrow and restrict human consciousness rather than heighten it.
Korzybski considered consciousness of the abstraction process the
most effective safeguard against these semantic restraints and
the key to further human evolution. Consciousness of abstraction
was defined as "awareness that in our process of abstracting
we have left out characteristics."7 Stated
differently, an individual apprehends himself and his world fully
and accurately to the degree that he continually translates
higher-order abstractions back to the naive sensory level,
becoming experientially aware of the discrepancy between
conceptualization and sense impression.
Today there is a growing recognition of the semantic dangers
described by Korzybski and a greater appreciation of the
corrective measures he recommended. For example, in order to
counteract the destructive consequences of
"surplus-repression" (intensional thought?), Herbert
Marcuse suggested the cultivation of "libidinal
rationality" (consciousness of abstraction?)a process
which would abolish elementalism and reintegrate human
experience.8 Similarly, the literary critic, Ihab
Hassan, has noted:

For the neo-Freudians {viz., Norman 0. Brown}, the problem
is repression, abstraction, and the solution is the
construction of a Dionysian ego. In their view, language
ultimately becomes "the natural speech of the
body," a phrase adopted from Rilke.9

These semantic problems and prescriptions account in part for
the current interest in the drug-induced psychedelic experience
and its potential value as a therapeutic or educative device. As
the contributors to this volume make clear, the LSD-state
increases one's ability "to recognize and hence respond to
fundamental sense impressions" without semantic barriers.
The freshness of perception and feeling of unity which
characterize the experience suggest that the "is" of
identity is temporarily eliminated. Like the structural
differential method devised by Korzybski, the LSD experience may
be viewed as nonverbal training in nonidentity. At its best the
psychedelic state permits the subject to evaluate with some
detachment (1) the structure of his semantic framework (its
similarity to reality), and (2) his semantic reactions (so that
they take place more on the silent objective level). These two
kinds of learning experience were recommended by Korzybski as the
most effective means of increasing consciousness of abstracting.10 In the present era, the press of cultural demands on the
individual, symbolized by an undue emphasis on language and
conventional modes of perception, are perhaps greater and felt
more keenly than a generation ago. While recognizing that
"it takes a good 'mind' to be 'insane,'11
Korzybski noted that "the average person 1933 must be
considered pathological."12 From a similar
perspective, Nettler has succinctly stated our current dilemma:

We may have to choose between the "health" of
the man who behaves badly because he sees accurately, and the
"health" of the man who behaves nicely because he
has learned the popular (i.e., socially self-delusional) way
of seeing falsely.13

LSD and the Search for Meaning

IN THIS CONNECTION, it is important to note that interest in
the psychedelic experience is heavily concentrated among the
upper-middle class, intellectual-professional strata of society;
among healthy, well-adjusted people according to standard
criteria of normality. The type of self-dissatisfaction expressed
by this segment of our population seems consistent with the
cultural climate mentioned earlier. More specifically, the nature
of human discontent in a modern technological (and affluent)
society has been undergoing rapid and profound change. In recent
years, artists and scholars representing every field of endeavor
have flooded the various media of communication with discussions
of the quest for identity and meaning, the decline of traditional
values and religion, modern man's deep sense of alienation, and
the advent of science as a way of life. The current interest in
humanistic psychology, oriental philosophy, existential
psychiatry, self-actualization, and psychedelic drugs
represents reactions to these trends and offers solace to the
"encapsulated man" living in an age of "strident
over-communication" Similarly, the conventional neuroses and
character disorders are in decline, being replaced by what one
writer termed the philosophical neurosis.14 It may
well be as some critics suggest that orthodox psychotherapy with
its emphasis on early childhood conflicts and social adjustment
is already obsolete. Many individuals who understand all too well
the antecedents of their behavior still feel unfulfilled and find
their lives lacking in significance and purpose.
In the light of what seems to be an incompatibility between
psychotherapy as traditionally conceived, on the one hand, and
the nature of modern discontent, on the other, it is not
surprising that many people who fit this description express an
interest in the psychedelic experience and find their way to LSD.
A case in point is the almost four hundred voluntary subjects who
have undergone a large-dose LSD session at the International
Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California.
Approximately one-third of the total sample did not present
complaints of a psychiatric nature and revealed minimal neurotic
symptomology according to both diagnostic evaluation and
psychological test data. Consistent with the independent
assessment, the interest expressed by these subjects in the
psychedelic experience seemed to be "growth-motivated"
rather than "deficiency-motivated."15 Some
were dimly aware of potentialities or personal aptitudes which
they hoped to activate and develop more fully. Others expressed a
feeling of emptiness and lack of meaningful purpose while
adequately meeting the exigencies of life. Still others sought a
deeper understanding or more satisfying resolutions to problems
of an existential nature.
Being relatively free of emotional disturbance, these
subjects were more likely to grapple with fundamental problems
during the LSD experience. In addition to examining self-identity
and the relationship between self and non-self, questions of
love, death, creation, and the conciliation of opposites received
frequent attention. Follow-up interviews, clinical ratings, and
subjective reports indicated that these subjects benefited
considerably from the psychedelic experience along the lines of
self-actualization, richer creative experience, and enhancement
of specific abilities and talents. Although extremely tentative
at this point, these preliminary findings are at least suggestive
of the ways in which these powerful agents might be employed to
explore and enhance human consciousness.

Research: Current Status and Future Trends

SINCE more than three hundred studies on the use of LSD-25 as
a therapeutic agent have been reported, only the most salient and
consistent findings will be summarized.16 Despite
great diversity in the conduct of these studies, impressive
improvement rates have been almost uniformly reported, with both
adults and children, and in group as well as individual
psychotherapy. Used in conjunction with traditional
psychotherapy, or as a primary vehicle for inducing rapid
personality change, LSD has been found to facilitate improvement
in patients representing the complete spectrum of neurotic,
psychosomatic, and character disorders. Particularly noteworthy
are the positive results obtained with cases highly resistant to
conventional forms of therapy. High remission rates among
alcoholics, for example, have frequently been reported following
a single, large-dose LSD session. Based on their findings with
more than one thousand alcoholics, Hoffer and his coworkers
concluded that LSD was twice as effective as any other treatment
program.17 Other chronic conditions carrying a poor
prognosis which have responded favorably to psychedelic therapy
include sexual deviations, criminal psychopathy, autism in
children, and adolescent behavior disorders.
When employed as an adjunct to psychotherapy, most
investigators have associated the beneficial effects of LSD with
reduced defensiveness, the reliving of early childhood
experiences, increased access to unconscious material, and
greater emotional expression. In contrast, when used as a primary
vehicle for rapid personality change, emphasis is usually placed
on the transcendental quality of the experience, the re-synthesis
of basic values and beliefs, and major changes in the
relationship between self and environment.
Since most reports on the therapeutic effectiveness of LSD
have been based on clinical judgments of questionable
reliability, it is worth noting that comparable results have been
obtained by investigators in many other countries. The likelihood
of a significant positive bias is further lessened by the widely
divergent theoretical persuasions represented in this research.
These include Freudian, Jungian, behavioristic, existentialist,
and a variety of eclectic orientations. It seems safe to conclude
from the breadth and consistency of the clinical evidence that
LSD can produce far-reaching beneficial effects in some people,
under some conditions. However, controlled studies of the process
variables involved have yet to be conducted. Specifically, in
what ways do various kinds of people respond to LSD, both during
the experience and afterward? What are the optimal conditions of
administration for given objectives? How can we account for the
various kinds and extent of change which follow an LSD
experience? In short, despite the mass of accumulated data on the
outcome of psychedelic therapy, relationships among process
variables remain obscure.
Primarily because of the controversy surrounding these
chemical agents (which interestingly is confined to the United
States), controlled research aimed at maximizing safety,
effectiveness, and applicability has barely begun. In addition to
questions concerning the potential uses of LSD as a therapeutic
or educative device, its possible value as a basic research tool
for investigating higher mental processes and their relationship
to behavior has also been minimally explored. Although the
clinical evidence and testimonial reports indicate that LSD
promises to be a valuable tool for both the study and enhancement
of cognitive and perceptual functioning, such claims have been
neither supported nor refuted by means of controlled studies.
Other hypotheses readily testable include the often noted
similarity of the psychedelic experience to certain phases of the
creative process and its possible relationship to other altered
states of consciousness such as hypnosis, transcendental
experiences, identity crises, and dream states.

Psychological Interpretations of the Psychedelic Experience

AN ALMOST INVARIANT effect of the psychedelics, cutting
across the wide range of individual reactions, is an
extraordinary alteration in perception. This usually takes the
form of intensified sensory acuity in all modalities and a
blurring of self-nonself boundaries. Whether expanded awareness
or increased insight accompany these unhabitual perceptions and
altered frames of reference is not a function of the chemical
agent. In contrast to the earlier search for
"drug-specific" effects of LSD, it is now generally
recognized that the nature, intensity, and content of the
experience are the resultant of complex transactions between the
subject's past history and personality, the set and expectancies
of both subject and administrator, and the physical and
psychological environment in which the experience takes place.
Importantly, most of these determinants can be intentionally
arranged and manipulated so as to foster either a propitious or a
stressful experience. Based on data obtained from a large sample
of cases, Harman noted that when the context of the experience is
optimized, the subject "is able to re-examine his
relationships with others, his attitudes and values, his beliefs
about his own nature and that of the world he lives inall
with unusual nonattachment and freedom from threat."18
Similarly, in a careful study of 690 administrations of LSD,
Chandler and Hartman concluded that:

... the drug does not appear to produce any serious or
marked impairment in the major ego functions. The patient
remains oriented for person, place, and time. He does not
appear to lose contact with everyday reality... he can
withdraw his awareness from the physical reality of the
moment and allow his attention to become completely absorbed
by the phenomena at the deeper psychic levels, but he retains
the ability to focus his awareness back on to external
objective reality whenever he chooses...19

The striking similarity between this state and certain phases
of the creative process has been described by Frank Barron20
and demonstrated in a study of thirty artists given LSD. In
psychoanalytic terms, the psychedelic experience resembles a
"regression in the service of the ego" or a merging of
impulse and realistic thinking. In the light of the cultural
trends noted earlier, it is noteworthy that this capacity to
blend primary and secondary processes has been recognized
recently as a condition of superior functioning or positive
mental health. Irnportantly, there is some evidence indicating
that individuals tend to display more of this ability following
an LSD session as well as during the psychedelic experience
itself. If conditions are favorable, the experience and its
aftermath have much in common with a self-actualizing "peak
experience." 21 The process of transformation
operative in such cases seems highly similar to Erik Erikson's
penetrating analysis of the "identity crisis" as a
catalyst for rapid personal growth.22 A number of studies have demonstrated that relatively stable
individual characteristics (for example, personality) are as
important as set and setting in determining response to LSD. In a
study of changes in values and beliefs, personality, and
behavioral patterns in major life areas, Mogar and Savage found
that the nature, magnitude, and stability of post-LSD changes
were related to personality variables and modal defense patterns.23
As might be expected, subjects with a well-defined but flexible
self-structure responded most favorably to the drug, while those
with either underdeveloped or overly rigid ego defenses responded
least favorably. This differential finding parallels the
distinction often made between the creative process and psychotic
states. An analysis of imaginal responses to the Rorschach led
Holt and Havel to conclude:

We find primary process thinking in conscious subjects
either out of strength or out of weakness. In the former
case, it is more likely to appear in a playful or esthetic
frame of reference, accompanied by pleasant affect. If, on
the other hand, primary thinking breaks through the usual
defenses uninvited and unwanted, the subject may feel anxious
or threatened and is likely to act defensively.24

Like the psychedelic experience, both creative and psychotic
states are characterized by greater access to unconscious
material. However, in contrast to the regressive quality of
psychosis, creativity involves a temporary and voluntary
breaking up of perceptual constancies which permits the
individual "to shake free from dead literalism, to recombine
the old familiar elements into new, imaginative, amusing, or
beautiful patterns."25 Despite these important
differences, it should be emphasized that altered states of
consciousness, whether willfully induced, stress-induced, or
drug-induced, all favor sensation and image over word-concept.
This type of deviation from conventional perception will be
welcomed and valuable rather than feared and harmful to the
degree that the psychological and social context of the
experience are congenial to the needs of a particular individual.
As it was stressed earlier, systematic research into the
relationship among relevant factors must be conducted before
"optimum" conditions can be reliably specified for
given objectives and subjects.

LSD As Training in Visualization

IN THE LIGHT of the cardinal features of the psychedelic
experience and its apparent similarity to the creative process,
it is worth noting that each contributor to this issue makes some
reference to the rupture which often exists between experience
and language. As indicated previously, awareness of the causes,
correlates, and consequences of this basic human problem is no
longer a unique concern of general semantics. On the contrary, it
is now widely recognized as a dominant theme in contemporary
thought. As a phenomenon of modern culture, the psychedelic
experience highlights this central problem and suggests one means
of alleviating it.
There is some indication that LSD will prove effective as a
method of nonaristotelian training producing greater semantic
flexibility. As an aid to sane, creative living, Korzybski
emphasized the need to "visualize our theories." The
soundness of this recommendation has been dramatically confirmed
by Albert Einstein:

The words of the language, as they are written or spoken,
do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The
psychical entities in my case are... visual and some of
muscular type. Conventional words and other signs have to be
sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage.26

It has been suggested that psychedelic drugs facilitate the
conversion of semantic reactions into sensations and images. In
this respect, there is a striking similarity between the LSD
experience and "training in visualization which
automatically abolishes objectification, identification, and
allness."27 Korzybski's description of this
visualization process reads like countless reports of psychedelic
experiences.

... the higher abstractions are translated back into new
lower abstractions, which are closer to life. Such an
individual "sees," "visualizes," has
"intuitions," in his symbolic interplays. He then
has a new structural vision through a new survey of his own
experiences and all the experiences of others when translated
in terms of lower centres. He gains a deeper insight, which
he ultimately makes useful to all of us.28

In commenting on the growing distrust of language as a medium
of expression among contemporary artists, Ihab Hassan sums up the
fascination and promise symbolized (if not actualized) by the
psychedelics: "The story is really a very old one. To hear
again, to see again, to feel again, and perhaps sometimes to love
what is seen or heard or felt...."29 IN THE FOLLOWNG pages, each contributor describes some aspect
of the class of experiences associated with the ingestion of a
psychedelic agent. Yet the emphasis is clearly on a broad array
of experiences or states of consciousness which have been induced
by a variety of means, throughout man's history, and in every
culture of the world. If nothing else, the current advent of
perception-altering chemical agents calls attention to our
traditional neglect of novel thoughts and impulses. These papers
also demonstrate an important application of general semantics to
yet another facet of man's behavior and experience.
References
1 Aldous Huxley, "Culture and the Individual," in LSD:
The Consciousness-Expanding Drug, ed. David Solomon (New
York: Putnam, 1964), p. 316.
2 Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being
(Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1962).
3 Lancelot L. Whyte, The Next Development in Man (New
York: Mentor, 1950).
4 Arthur Burton and Robert Kantor, 'The Touching of the
Body," Psychoanalytic Review, 51 (1964), p. 122.
5 Robert Cohen, "Language and Behavior," American
Scientist, 49 (1961), p. 507.
6 Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 3d ed.
(Lakeville, Connecticut: Institute of General Semantics, 1948),
p. 417.
7 Ibid., p. 416.
8 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston:
Beacon, 1955).
9 Ihab Hassan, "The Dismemberment of Orpheus:
Reflections on Modern Culture, Language, and Literature." American
Scholar, 32(1963), p. 466.
10 Korzybski, op. cit., p. 37
11 Ibid., p. 309.
12 Ibid., p. 336.
13 George Nettler, "Good Men, Bad Men, and the
Perception of Reality," Sociometry, 24 (1961), p.
271.
14 William Schofield, Psychotherapy: The Purchase of
Friendship (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1964).
15 Maslow, op. cit., p. 19.
16 For a more detailed and referenced critique of the
extensive applications of LSD as a psychotherapeutic agent,
consult Robert Mogar and Charles Savage, "Personality
Changes Associated With LSD Therapy," Psychotherapy,
1 (1964), pp. 154-162; and David Solomon (ed.), LSD: The
Consciousness-Expanding Drug (New York: Putnam, 1964). An
excellent account of the psychopharmacological and behavioral
effects of LSD in animal and man may be found in Sidney Cohen, The
Beyond Within: The LSD Story (Atheneurn, 1964).
17 Sanford Unger, "Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin, and
Personality Change," in Solomon, op. cit., pp.
121-122.
18 Willis W. Harman, "Some Aspects of the
Psychedelic-Drug Controversy," Journal of Humanistic
Psychology, 3 (l963), p. 95.
19 Arthur Chandler and Mortimer Hartman, "LSD-25 As a
Facilitating Agent in Psychotherapy," Archives of General
Psychiatry, 2 (1960), p. 290
20 Frank Barron. Creativity and Psychological Health
(Princeton: Van Nostrand 1963), pp. 256-257.
21 Maslow, op. cit., pp.67-108.
22 Erik Erikson, "Identity and the Life Cycle," Psychological
Issues, 1, (1959) pp. 1-171.
23 Mogar and Savage, op. cit. 24 Robert R. Holt and Joan Havel, "A Method of Assessing
Primary and Secondary Process in the Rorschach," in Rorschach
Psychology, ed. Maria Rickers-Ovsiankina (New York: Wiley,
1960), p. 311.
25 Ibid., p. 304.
26 Jacques Hadamard, Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1949), p. 118.
27 Korzybski, op. cit., p. 454
28 Ibid., p. 306.
29 Hassan, op. cit., p. 484.